‘Thank you, Mamma.’

‘Open it,’ commanded the Duchess.

Victoria did so and looked at the blank pages in some astonishment.

‘It is a Journal,’ said the Duchess. ‘You must write your impressions in it. I shall wish to see it at regular intervals so you will have to write your best. I am sure you will find it a rewarding exercise both at the time and in the future.’

Victoria was pink with pleasure. Yes, she would enjoy a Journal. What fun to write in it what she felt. Perhaps she could do some sketches in it. She did enjoy sketching and was really rather good. No, it would be for writing only. Oh dear, Mamma would have to see it, which would mean she would have to be very careful of what she wrote.

‘You may take it away now,’ said the Duchess, ‘and start writing your impressions on the day we leave. Very soon we shall have news for you.’

Victoria went from the room. Lehzen was waiting outside for her. They would never allow her to be alone even in the apartments. I’m nothing but a prisoner, thought Victoria resentfully, as she had done a hundred times before.

She told Lehzen about the Journal and Lehzen of course thought it would be an excellent exercise.

In the schoolroom Victoire Conroy was sitting on the floor blowing bubbles. Victoria caught a beautiful one which reflected the windows in a lovely reddish blue light.

‘I want to blow bubbles,’ she cried.

She took her clay pipe and sat down with Victoire.

Lovely soap bubbles, riding up to the ceiling, some reaching it only to burst when they touched it, others fading out before. She laughed with pleasure, vying with Victoire to blow the biggest and send them off farther than hers.

She dreamed as she always did when she blew bubbles; perhaps that was why she liked doing it. She saw herself growing up, sitting with the young Georges, being flattered by them, dancing with them, and both of them trying so hard to please her.

But of course Mamma would not allow her to see them. She had cousins but she must not play with them; she was going to be a Queen but she was a prisoner; she was going on journeys but her jailers would be with her, she had a Journal in which she could write everything she felt, but Mamma would see it.

It will not always be so, she thought; then she exclaimed with joy. She had blown the biggest and most beautiful of bubbles. It rose and fell and went sailing round the room. Victoire had stopped to watch it. There never was such a bubble; and then suddenly it exploded in mid-air and was gone.


* * *

The Queen called on the Duchess of Cumberland.

It was typical of the King and Queen that they called on their relatives and rarely summoned them regally as other monarchs had done. Imagine George IV calling on them! thought the Duchess of Cumberland. William and Adelaide had little dignity.

‘How delightful of you to come,’ said Frederica. ‘You must have known that I needed cheering up.’

Adelaide smiled. She knew it well enough. She had learned what it meant to have the scandal sheets directed against one.

‘And,’ went on Frederica, ‘I feel better already. But pray tell me, how is the King?’

Adelaide had seated herself comfortably on a sofa as she said: ‘Oh, not very well. His asthma is troubling him and his hay fever is starting again.’

‘Poor William. I feel for His Majesty.’

‘It is tiresome … with all his duties.’

She spoke, thought Frederica, like a humble housewife. How ironical that she should be the Queen. Obviously she cared little for the title and would have been happier as plain Duchess of Clarence for the rest of her life. Being fairy godmother to countless children pleased her more than anything else.

‘The children are at Kew,’ said Adelaide. ‘The children’ were never long out of her conversation. ‘They enjoy it there so much. The boys can play their wild games in the gardens and the little ones can have plenty of fresh country air.’

‘And you will soon be with them, I daresay.’

‘The King and I go to Kew tomorrow.’

‘How the old King and Queen used to love Kew!’

‘William says they always referred to it as “dear little Kew”. I must say I think that is very apt.’

‘And my boy is behaving well.’

‘Admirably,’ said Adelaide. ‘A dear boy! How proud you must be of him!’

Frederica admitted this was so. ‘His father is, too.’

‘But of course. What a great comfort!’ Adelaide spoke wistfully.

How amusing, thought Frederica, if Adelaide was with child after all. No, it was not really amusing. Ernest would be furious, because if it were the case their son’s marriage to Victoria would be of little significance. And William was unwell. If William died and Victoria was Queen, the Duchess of Kent would be Regent. That would never do, and what chance had Ernest now of getting in and taking the throne? The people would never let that happen. Circumstances changed one’s desires. At one time Ernest – and she with him – had wanted William put away as insane, but not now. The Duchess of Kent’s regency would be far worse than William’s rule. For that woman would never permit a marriage between Victoria and the Cumberlands’ son, George.

‘Our George really is a bright boy,’ went on Frederica. ‘I know all parents think that of their children but I don’t believe Ernest and I are deceiving ourselves.’

‘Indeed you are not,’ Adelaide declared warmly. ‘He is a bright and charming boy. As you know, I love him well. It would be impossible not to.’

‘And he loves you. You should hear him talk of the perfections of his Aunt Adelaide. Sometimes he calls you Queeny as the little ones do.’

Adelaide smiled. ‘The darlings!’ she said.

‘And Victoria … she is never there,’ said Frederica.

‘Never. Such a pity. Poor child. They are bringing her up so strictly. I believe she rarely has any fun.’

‘She should be meeting her cousins.’

‘That’s what William says. But to tell the truth I rarely broach the subject of Victoria to him. It upsets him.’

‘And George Cambridge is well?’

‘Very well and happy I’m glad to say.’ Adelaide’s expression softened even further. Young Cambridge was the favourite … he and little crippled Louise. They were the Queen’s special charges because they were always with her, the parents of both those children being overseas.

And how, wondered Frederica, are we going to oust Cambridge from first place? That will be difficult. The only one who could do it would be Victoria herself. Surely she must prefer her cousin Cumberland. Was there some way of bringing their son to Victoria without young Cambridge’s being there?

That was something which could not be discussed with Adelaide.

‘The two boys are the best of friends … your George and mine,’ said Adelaide.

Her George! Oh dear! She would try to marry Victoria to Cambridge and the King would do the same. She and Ernest would have to think of something.

‘Such a good boy! He writes to his mother regularly. Poor Augusta! I fear it is a sad wrench to part with him. I do not know how she does it. I tell her that her loss is my gain … but how I feel for her!’

Adelaide would run on for hours about her precious children if allowed to but Frederica found it particularly galling to listen to an account of the virtues of George Cambridge, her son’s chief rival for the hand of Victoria.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘that you came to comfort me. Dear Adelaide, you are such a good soul. But there is no need to remain silent about all these distressing matters. They are uppermost in our minds, we both know.’

‘My dear Frederica, I too have suffered from these wicked scribblers.’

‘They delight in taunting us. That affair took place years ago. It is wicked of them to revive it now.’

Frederica was referring to a recent pamphlet printed by a certain Joseph Phillips which had revived that long-ago scandal concerning the Duke of Cumberland and his valet Sellis. Sellis had been found in his room in the Duke’s apartment at St James’s with his throat cut; the Duke had been badly wounded. The Duke’s story had been that the valet had attacked him and then cut his own throat because he feared the consequences. ‘He went mad suddenly,’ was the Duke’s verdict, but as Sellis had a pretty wife and the Duke’s reputation was quite evil then as now the general opinion had been that the Duke had been discovered in the woman’s bed by her husband who had understandably remonstrated. The Duke had then murdered Sellis and inflicted a wound on himself to attempt to make good his version of the affair. This had happened more than twenty years before; but the Duke had become very unpopular during the agitation over the Reform Bill because he had been one of its most enthusiastic opponents. Then of course there had recently been the charge of incest with his sister Sophia which had been brought up against him, in addition to which there was the suicide of Lord Graves, with whose wife the Duke was conducting an affair. No member of the royal family had a more sinister reputation than the Duke of Cumberland; but never had the people been so much against him as when he opposed the Reform Bill.

Cumberland, angry that Phillips should have dared print this pamphlet particularly at such a time when, with the help of the Orange Lodges, he hoped to be the King of England, prosecuted Phillips who had just been found guilty and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

‘At least,’ soothed Adelaide, ‘the man was found guilty.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Frederica, a little impatiently, ‘but people forget that the man was sentenced and they go on thinking Ernest a murderer.’